Discussing American’s project to reconfigure the seatings on some airplanes, Negroni wrote:

But the airline, in trying to cut costs during bankruptcy, hired outside maintenance companies this summer for the first time to modify its cabins. And airline documents show that those workers did not understand how to properly install the seats.

The Federal Aviation Administration has opened an investigation into the seat problems.

She added:

But since October, it has offered an evolving set of explanations for the seat problem, blaming first the clamp used to hold the seats in place and later an accumulation of soda and dirt in the seat tracks that prevented the clamp from locking properly. It now says that a part “did not work the way it was designed to work,” though the airline said in an advisory to mechanics that a contributing factor was the “incorrect installation of the seat to the seat track.”

We ran Negroni’s story in Saturday’s Business section. We’d advise Airline Biz readers who don’t receive the print edition of the Dallas Morning News to click on the link in the first paragraph to check it out.

She also discussed her story and findings further in her blog, Flying Lessons.